UML Launches TV Ad on Nanotechnology

Kicking Off the First-Ever Campus-Wide Campaign

LOWELL - The University of Massachusetts Lowell today launched a television ad - the first in a series intended to raise awareness of the campus' achievements.

"Inventing the Future" - a 30-second spot which focuses on the innovative nanotechnology research on campus - will air on cable networks in towns within a 20-mile radius of the University. It kicks off the first-ever campus-wide television advertising campaign.

"People who have personal experience with the campus - students, alums, people with whom we maintain research and educational partnerships - know the excellence of the work going on here," said Dr. William T. Hogan, chancellor. "Our intention is to increase awareness of that quality across a larger population."

Over the next few months, the commercial will air several times a day on CNN, ESPN, NECN and Fox News and during early morning programming on CNBC. It also will be shown during some Celtics and college football basketball games. Starting tomorrow, the ad, as well as a transcript and detailed schedule, should be available for viewing on www.uml.edu/newsroom/ads.

Christine Dunlap, executive director of communications and marketing, said the ads enhance the University's recruitment and fundraising efforts.

"We want to educate the public about how the University is supporting the region through its research, programs and partnerships with communities and industry," she said.

The first television spot reflects the University's strength in nanotechnology, which involves working with materials measured in the billionths of a meter - units roughly one thousandth the diameter of a human hair. Around the world, leaders of science and industry believe it could become the sort of enabling technology, like electricity or the Internet, that leads to broad commercial and social changes.

The University's leadership in plastics engineering and its long, successful history of partnering with industry place it in the forefront of transforming laboratory inventions into high-volume, mass produced products.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a $12.4 million grant to a three-university consortium - the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Northeastern University and the University of New Hampshire - to establish the NSF Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing. The Center will work with industry partners to research the scale up of nano-scale production processes. UMass Lowell also has initiated planning for a new building to house its nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing research.

In the ad, three University scientists describe their work in nanotechnology: Prof. Julie Chen, director of the UML Nanomanufacturing Center; Assoc. Prof. Joey Mead, co-director of the NSF Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing; and Prof. Stephen McCarthy, director of the Institute for Plastics Innovation.

UMass Lowell, a comprehensive university with special expertise in applied science and technology, is committed to educating students for lifelong success and conducting research and outreach activities that sustain the economic, environmental and social health of the region. Lowell offers its 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students more than 80 degree programs in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Management, and the School of Health and Environment and the Graduate School of Education.